Up to $60 Refund for Your Baby Einstein Videos

Baby Einstein will give you $15.99 each for any of their DVDs you might have lying around the house, whether they have cases or not, purchased as far back as June 2004. You don't need a receipt. That's, ahem, at least $15 more than you could get for these things at resale. Limit 4 refunds per household.

This is apparently the result of the efforts of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood to stop Little Einstein from making claims that its videos are educational for babies after this study showed that parking your infant in front of a TV seems (surprise, surprise) to actually make him dumber.

Everyone knows that the most educational video for babies was made by Beyonce. I think that's what Kanye was trying to point out at the MTV Music Awards.

Technically, you are supposed to only ask for the refund if you're "not satisfied" with the videos. So if your kids absolutely loved them and you relished the quiet, productive time you gained by using them, but now your kids have outgrown them, you may not technically qualify. However, now that there was a study disproving the company's claims ... I don't think you'll have to go to confession this week if you return an old, scratched disk that is worn down to a wafer due to repeated watchings.

Now if you head out this weekend to scour the thrift shops for Baby Einstein videos to return, that would be dishonest. I'm totally not doing that this weekend. So please stay home and do not get to the thrift stores before me.*

* Seriously, I'm not doing that. I'm getting a massage I bought on Groupon!